Banner
Abstract
Role of proprioception in the athletic skill recovery
published in March - April 2023 - in Il Fisioterapista - issue n.2
Fabrizio Brindisino

The concept of shoulder “dynamic stability” is based on the existence of specialized peripheral afferent neurons that result in proprioceptive information. Such organelles transform a mechanical deformation of the tissue into neural signals addressed to the central nervous system by afferent sensory pathway. As a result of this, voluntary joint control, coordination, motor learning, and joint stability during movement are all closely dependent characters of this feedback- and feedforward- based conduction system. Proprioception is the “prima donna” of this neuromotor loop and has a number of subdomains and in particular “joint position sense,” which identifies the ability to position the limb in space and to reproduce that position; “kinesthesia,” the ability to pick up an active or passive movement of the joint; and also the ability to perceive vibrations, different levels of force production, changes in “joint movement velocity”. The rehabilitation approach, aimed at the recovery of proprioception, should be initiated from the earliest steps of recovery, with ever-changing modalities in relation to the increasing skills and abilities acquired by the patient, the distance from the injury, surgery, and respecting the biological recovery time. In the most modern vision of the rehabilitation continuum, the pathway marked by the “phases”, in chronological succession, gives way to the achievement of stages and goals with a progressive and increasing acquisition of skills aimed at the restructuring certain skills, in the one propaedeutic to the next, which guarantee a gradual, constant, ingravescent and increasingly complete recovery.